Among the earliest of the tests on the new satellite was a NASA sponsored project conducted by Ohio University
and its commercial partner, the Huntington National Bank. HNB is a $17 billion regional bank with 338 offices in
fourteen states. Transactions on HNB's data networks currently travel on terrestrial T-1 lines. The Ohio University/HNB
tests were initiated to determine the capability of the satellite for service restoral in the case of a failure in one
of the Bank's terrestrial links.

The ACTS Disaster Recovery Project was designed to test the Bank's ability to by-pass such problems on the ground
by switching to a space path. The goal was to make the switch-over with the briefest interuption of service, with
minimal loss of transmitted data, within acceptable cost and with sustained security.

"The experiment is to test whether the bank data can be quickly and effectively rerouted using space as a way to
bypass the problems on the ground. Having communications back up is important for banks, insurance companies and other
such organizations for they stand not only to lose their money but customer confidence which is very important for such
kind of organizations when their communication lines are down."